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John McEwen has consistently explored the nature of communication between animals, between animals and people, and between artworks and viewers. He creates silhouettes of animals, mainly dogs or wolves, most of which are flame cut from sheets of 6 cm-thick steel. At times, depending on the angle from which they are viewed and the speed of passersby, these silhouettes seem to snap to life. For McEwen the one constant in the human imagination is the animal. Marconi—a sculpture of a German shepherd sitting and staring at a steel cable—was the first in a long series to explore this concept. With this work McEwen’s intent was to establish a narrative stripped to its bare essentials, yet full of speculations.